A Journey of Discovery

Monthly Archives: October 2013

I do not have a sweet tooth. Let me repeat: I do NOT have a sweet tooth. Sounds like I’m trying to convince myself, right?

The truth is, I have come to accept that I do, in fact, have a sweet tooth one month every year. And that month runs from mid-October to Thanksgiving.

(OK, so it’s more like 45 days.)

This is not something I can explain. I do not understand it myself. However, I am convinced that the retail world we live in has something to do with it.

There is some kind of alien force that invades my brain every October and turns me into one of those people – and, I say those in the most affectionate kind of way because most people I know and love are like this – who love sweets. I, myself, am not one of those people.

Well, not most of the year.

Eleven months out of the year (sometimes ten and a half, depending on how early Halloween candy hits the shelves) I never, and I mean never, EVER crave sweet things. But more than that, sweets have no appeal to me most of the time.

I never eat donuts for breakfast, I scrape the frosting off cupcakes at birthday parties, and I stopped using flavored coffee creamer in my twenties, roughly ten seconds after I started drinking coffee.

I’d rather have the appetizer than the dessert, I prefer onion rings over ice cream (that’s instead of, not on top of,) and Cabernet rather than Chardonnay. (Well, OK I never drink white wine. In fact, the year-old bottle in my fridge that I cook with probably needs replaced.)

Today is October 22nd, and even though I haven’t yet bought Halloween candy, the aliens landed this morning. This is how I know…

Those sneaky aliens put chocolate syrup on my cereal!

I’m telling you, that bowl of chocolate banana Cheerios was down my gullet before I even knew what had happened. The cat was lapping at the dots of milk at the bottom of my bowl when it dawned on me what time of year it is.

That bottle of sugar-free chocolate syrup has been sitting in the spot next to my low-sugar almond milk since spring and I haven’t even noticed it. My alien-infested brain noticed it this morning.

So, here starts the season of hot chocolate instead of hot tea, stealing from the kids’ trick-or-treat stash, and now apparently chocolate syrup on my cereal.

The announcement was made yesterday so now I’m free to talk about the BIG change we are about to enter into….

After calling Kansas home for over 25 years, we are pulling up roots and moving south to Savannah, Georgia.

My husband, David, has been working as a consultant for thirteen years, much of that time on the road wherever the current project happens to be – usually the East Coast – but has accepted a direct position with Gulfstream Aerospace in Savannah.

I am as thrilled as I am heartbroken; looking forward as much as I look back. There will be laughs mixed with tears in the weeks ahead as we say goodbye to our families, our friends, our home. The goodbyes, of course, will be the hard part.

But hey, it’s Savannah – my love affair city! If you’ve ever been there, you understand why that is. If you haven’t been there … well, you’re missing out. Come visit. I’d love to show you around.

I don’t yet know if this move will be a permanent transplant or a lengthy sojourning. I trust God will continue to lovingly shepherd us, as He has done so far.

The thing I look the most forward to is building a full-time family life. With David on the road much of the time, our family life has felt somewhat fragmented and time with friends has had to be sacrificed to preserve our precious-little family time.

I can say, without a doubt, that I believe this to be God’s plan for our family right now. There have been too many signs pointing this direction in the last couple of years, and especially the last few months, to deny that.

And He has so graciously paved the way for us – from moving the mountains we thought were immovable to answering prayers before we even knew they needed prayed. As the song lyrics say … this is what it means to be held; this is what it is to be loved.